John Patric

John Patric
Born John Patric
(1902-05-22)May 22, 1902
Snohomish, Washington, USA
Died August 31, 1985(1985-08-31) (aged 83)
Everett, Washington, USA
Resting place Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery, Snohomish, Washington[1]
Pen name Hugo N. Frye
Simon Legree
Occupation Journalist, writer
Language English
Nationality American
Alma mater Snohomish High School
University of Michigan
Genre non-fiction
Subject Travel, consumer protection
Notable works Yankee Hobo in the Orient
Signature
John Patric's signature
Website
johnpatric.org

John Patric (May 22, 1902[2] – August 31, 1985[3]) was an American writer. He was a contributing writer for National Geographic during the mid to late 1930s and early 1940s[4] and was the author of two books. He was known for his 1943 book Yankee Hobo in the Orient, of which over twelve million copies were sold domestically and internationally in both hardcover and digest format.[5] In the 1940s, he was one of the best-known Oregon writers.[6]

He wrote a National Geographic feature article, Imperial Rome Reborn, about fascist Italy,[7] and after writing on World War II shipyard labor practices for Reader's Digest, he gave testimony at a United States congressional hearing.[8] Patric or his works are briefly mentioned by other writers on a diverse range of topics, including political history,[9] an artist biography,[10] an author biography,[11] media history,[12] cultural criticism,[7] ship building,[8] fascism,[13] and Korean history.[14]

In later life, Patric was an early influence on portrait artist Chuck Close,[10] and he gained some notoriety as a satirical political candidate in his home state of Washington.[15]

Childhood

John Patric was born in Snohomish, Washington on May 22, 1902. The ground floor of the family home in which he was raised served as the Snohomish public library,[16] surrounding him with books and ideas from an early age. At the time of the 1910 US Census, the Patric household consisted of six people: The father Arthur N. Patric (1869–1945)[17] from Pennsylvania was a self-employed hardware merchant, and owner of the family residence without mortgage. The mother Emma C. Patric (1877–1961)[17] was from Wisconsin, and served as the town librarian.[18] Their four children were listed as John (age 7), Maud (age 6), James (age 4), and Dorothy (age 1).[19] By the time of the 1920 census,[20] John Patric was listed as a salesman at his father's hardware store, Maud Anita Patric had died (1904–1914),[17] newborn son William Patric and a lodger named John Miller whose profession was listed as "Post Master" had joined the household.

At one point during his childhood, Patric "ran away, and hoboed [his] way from Seattle to Mexico and back, and nearly all railway men [he] met were kind to [him]. They shared their lunches with [him], they helped [him] locate other trains, and sometimes let [him] ride in the cab."[21] Patric returned to Snohomish, and graduated from Snohomish High School as valedictorian[22] and student body President of his senior high school class. He left home shortly thereafter to begin writing and travels.[23]

Education and career

Black eye, bruised lips

College years

Traveling extensively throughout the 1920s and 1930s while often living out of a car, Patric interspersed periods of employment as a journalist with periods of study at a number of universities,[6][9] including the University of Michigan (1924–1925),[24] the University of Oregon,[6] and the University of Texas at Austin (1932–33).[9] He also attended universities in North Carolina, Idaho, Minnesota, and California, but never received a degree.[25] These and many other experiences are recounted in his nearly complete memoir manuscript Hobo Years[26] and to a lesser extent Yankee Hobo in the Orient.

Blunderbuss

By 1933 he was attending the University of Texas at Austin because it was "the cheapest school in the country, considering its facilities".[27] Patric soon involved himself in the robust discussions of politics on campus, and wrote a number of articles for the University newspaper named The Daily Texan. Under the pen name Simon Legree, his extracurricular involvement in producing and circulating a controversial pamphlet called The Blunderbuss[22] made Austin headlines;[9] while distributing the circular, Patric was assaulted by former UT student body President Allan Shivers, who was later to become the one of the longest serving governors in Texas history. Patric having already been expelled from three universities by this point in his life, the "Blunderbuss affair" prompted a fourth expulsion.[9] This episode is covered in great detail in his work entitled Simon Legree's Book as well as The Austin Statesman and Austin Daily Dispatch newspaper articles of the time.[22]

Patric's exit from Austin was noted with a mysterious article in the Austin Daily Texan May 25, 1933, stating that police were searching for his missing person after an apparent abduction: "Mrs. C. E. Clinger, owner of the house, said she heard a commotion in Patric’s room, after which a shot was fired, either in the hall of the house or on the front porch. She said she saw four men enter a car at the south side of the house. Police received the call at about 10 o’clock. Mrs. Clinger said she saw Patric earlier in the night. Patric’s room was found in considerable disorder, with chairs and tables overturned, papers and clothes scattered about."[28] He soon turned up however, sending a series of letters from the road for publication in The Daily Texan, about his adventures after having purchased a 1927 Lincoln sedan, and charging passage to some West Coast-bound passengers, finally arriving in Carmel, California by October 10, 1933.

Travelling journalist

As early as 1920, 18-year-old Patric was listed among the "Who's Who of Washington Journalists" as a staff member of The Snohomish Tribune writing on assignment to travel with a friend named Norman Brown from Washington (State) to New York City.[29] In 1922, he was writing for the American Insurance Digest.[30] During the Depression Era, he was a traveling companion and friend to writer and Libertarian political theorist Rose Wilder Lane,[11] daughter of author Laura Ingalls Wilder, and wrote extensively for National Geographic. Patric's war time contributions to the Reader's Digest stirred controversy, and in May 1943 he was invited to give testimony before the House of Representatives' Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries executive hearings, in which he contended that labor union rules were having a negative impact on shipyard productivity during World War II, and made controversial recommendations to address them.[8]

Yankee Hobo in the Orient

Saving nearly $400 during the Great Depression selling rubber-stamp supplies[25] while living in his Lincoln Sedan, Patric traveled from North Carolina to Seattle in order to book passage for Japan in 1934 aboard the NYK vessel Heian Maru. In her memoir I Married a Korean, American expatriate Agnes Davis Kim wrote of her chance ship-board encounter with Patric, during which his mischievous sense of humor nearly got them arrested for threatening to "assassinate the Mikado" (Emperor of Japan) before they even got off the boat in Yokohama, Japan.

Patric's narrative accounts of the 2-year tour through 1930s Japan, China, and Korea on a very low budget were first published as a collection of articles for National Geographic. When war broke out in the Pacific, Patric quickly reworked his National Geographic material on Asian travel to fulfill the public's demand for more information on Japan. The repackaged and expanded book became his most notable work, Yankee Hobo in the Orient. First published in 1943 by Doubleday Doran, Inc. under the title Why Japan was Strong. The book was retitled Yankee Hobo in the Orient for the British edition by Methuen Publishing, and that title was used for subsequent editions.

The edition of June 20, 1943 of The New York Times featured a review of this work, stating that Patric displayed "qualities of good sense and poise and instinct for honest reporting sufficiently to give his excellent account of Japan's 'common man' the favorable reception it deserves."[31] In the book's second month of sales, it had climbed as high as seventh place in a list of nationwide best sellers.[32]

The September 1945 7th edition of the book (published now by the author's own "Frying Pan Creek" publishing firm), was substantially revised and illuminated by the author, adding detailed maps and numerous illustrations to accompany the significantly expanded narrative. By November 1945, Yankee Hobo had grown from the 1st edition's 22 chapters in 320 pages, to 45 chapters in 512 pages in the 8th edition. Writing in a foreword, the author described the pains taken in the layout and printing of his still-$2.50 hardcover edition, stating that due to its "especially fine typography and sturdy binding, it is the author's belief that physically, this book has become one of the best for the money ever published." Released only months after the August 1945 atomic bombings of Japan and Japan's surrender, the book now contained lengthy parenthetical asides conveying the author's thoughts on those events, as they pertained to his original work.

In the book and subsequent interviews,[25] Patric emphasized his opinion that the most important point in the book was that a person should seek to reduce "by whatever peaceful means his ingenuity may devise, the power of government – any government – to tell him what to do." In accordance with this doctrine, Patric supported his deliberately modest lifestyle by directly selling his reprinted and personally-inscribed copies of the book from person-to-person, and town to town throughout most of his later life:

I have big pockets in my clothes; so that I can carry about six Hobos with me, or twelve if I wear an overcoat. I can, in a good small town, and in the course of errands that seem perfectly legitimate (and are, except that I extend their numbers by buying a meal in four restaurants-soup and a glass of milk in the first place; hot beef sandwich in the second; piece of cake in the third; 'just coffee, please' in the fourth). I can sell about 35 Hobos in a day of hard work without seeming to have tried to sell any. Each Hobo will take about ten hours to read and, because the buyers have met the author and have an inscribed copy, they lend the book more than usual. So I figure maybe that those 35 copies-that's a top day-would account for 2,000 hours of human time; time in which the reader is exposed to my reactionary poison in doses not too long to interrupt the narrative too much.[33]

Mid-later life

John Patric

Frying Pan Creek Ranch

During the 1940s and early 1950s, Patric lived frugally on his remote 160-acre backwoods ranch at Frying Pan Creek, near Florence, Oregon.[33] During the war, he was involved in various efforts on the home front to support the war effort, ranging from a drive to collect used nylons (to be sterilized and sent to China for use as bandaging material),[34] to working with tire shops to retread discarded tires from the dump and fitting these "War Treads" to his automobile for a cross-country "endurance test".[35] He made sporadic but regular appearances in the print media of this period, on book tours, commenting on events of the day in letters to the editor, and interviews in Libertarian and conservative publications.[33]

Retirement

After many years of world-wide travel, writing, and life at Frying Pan Creek, Patric retired to his childhood home in Snohomish, Washington. Patric commenced publication of a weekly newsletter called The Snohomish Free Press later renamed The Saturday Evening Free Press under his pseudonym "Hugo N. Frye"[36] (an allusion to the Cornell University "Hugo N. Frye" hoax). For many years, the newsletter espoused Libertarian views on events of the day.[10] Under this pseudonym, Patric made regular appearances on Washington state election ballots over a period lasting more than two decades beginning in late 1960. He is listed on the Hoax Museum's list of satirical political candidates.[15] Use of this pseudonym landed Patric in jail for a short while, before the charges were ultimately dismissed.[37] The Spokesman-Review praised the decision, saying "Hugo N. Frye may be a fictitious character. But in this case he symbolizes a spirit of individual freedom and independence that must always remain alive in a free America".[38]

Insanity trial

In May 1958, Patric's unconventional lifestyle and controversial newsletter attracted official attention. Pursuant to a complaint signed by Snohomish Police Chief Clarence Boyd charging Patric with mental incompetence, John Patric waived his right to counsel during a Snohomish County Superior Court hearing,[39] and "launched into a tirade against the county".[40] Judge Ed Nollmeyer signed an order requiring 60 days of observation at the hospital, which led to more than four months in Northern State Hospital in Sedro Wooley, Washington and the Snohomish County jail. He eventually won his release in a subsequent hearing, while "acting as his own attorney, Patric based his defense on the contention that he had always been a screwball",[41] wrote Jack O'Donnell of The Herald (Everett, Washington).

Political candidacies

Owing to populist reforms advocated by the Washington State Grange movement and other allies, the unusual blanket primary system in use by Washington State from 1936–2003 enabled qualified candidates to list their party of preference without approval of the political parties themselves.[42] Making use of this unique feature of the Washington election system for partisan offices, John "Hugo N. Frye" Patric ran five times as a Republican, and eight times as a Democrat for statewide political office, as well as numerous other local offices in Snohomish County.[43] Patric was known to make a point of paying his candidacy filing fee entirely with loose change,[15] and to happily supply unwary journalists who fail to check their facts with an untruthful list of his qualifications for public office such as being an "FBI Special Agent", "Mayor", "acting treasurer", "deputy sheriff", "school board member", and being "married with three children".[43] Talking to newsmen in 1960, he explained his reasons for running for office thus "Nobody has a right to criticize public officials as bitterly and cynically as I criticize them if he is not willing to file for public office."[44] In the same interview, he distributed a written sheet of paper that was stamped at the top, "Patric for governor, temporary headquarters, Snohomish county jail, Everett, WA".[44]

Patric ran in the following elections:

Date Contest Type Party Result Percentage of vote[3][45]
September 13, 1960 WA Governor Blanket primary Democratic Lost 4.10%
September 18, 1962 WA US Senate Blanket primary Democratic Lost 3.65%
September 15, 1964 WA Governor Blanket primary Democratic Lost 1.18%
September 20, 1966 WA US House (District 2) Blanket primary Democratic Lost 4.76%
September 17, 1968 WA Governor Blanket primary Republican Lost 0.76%
September 15, 1970 WA US Senate Blanket primary Democratic Lost 1.07%
September 19, 1972 WA Governor Blanket primary Republican Lost 0.37%
September 17, 1974 WA US Senate Blanket primary Democratic Lost 4.87%
September 21, 1976 WA Governor Blanket primary Republican Lost 0.19%
September 19, 1978 WA US House (District 2) Blanket primary Republican Lost 0.81%
September 16, 1980 WA US Senate Blanket primary Democratic Lost 1.07%
September 14, 1982 WA US Senate Blanket primary Democratic Lost 0.79%
November 10, 1983 WA US Senate Blanket primary (Special) Republican Lost 0.03%

Final years

Interview with David Dilgard

From an interview with Northwest historian and Everett Public Library librarian David Dilgard on April 2, 2015:

John's lifestyle, including his diet, was highly idiosyncratic and he was a heavy smoker. The brief glimpses I got of his eating habits were startling. He apparently subsisted at times on canned mackerel and chocolate bars, washed down with large quantities of coffee. Although it may sound pretentious, his comparison of himself to the Cynic Diogenes was pretty convincing to me. Like Diogenes, his lifestyle was austere and he spent a lot of his time looking for honesty and virtue in his fellow man and loudly proclaiming that he had failed to find it. I did a memorial tribute to him some years ago that I titled "The Diogenes of Avenue D." (His house once stood on Avenue D in Snohomish.) I know he was in a care facility at the end of his life, no longer able to walk his usual rounds through the area. The loss of mobility alone might have killed him. He was fiercely self-sufficient and compulsively peripatetic and there's no way he could have survived being bed-ridden.

John's mom was a pretty fiery individual in her own right and I still hope for some examples of her writing to turn up. She seems to have been active in state politics, connected in some way with conservative forces allied to Governor Hartley in the 1920s and 30s. She got some attention a few years back when there was a webcam set up in the old Carnegie Library to watch for a ghost and some folks suggested that the specter was Emma. Others felt it was a former librarian named Catherine McMurchy. As far as I know the issue remains unresolved.

I wish we had some of Emma's writings but sadly we don't. She was born Emma Crueger and graduated from the UW in 1900. We've got John's own copies of his Saturday Evening Free Press, unfortunately not a complete run, but we've gradually added to it over the years and we have a pretty extensive collection of that publication. His unpublished autobiography Hobo Years (not to be confused with Yankee Hobo) details his experiences growing up in Snohomish. We've got drafts of chapters that were intended to go into that book, along with miscellaneous illustrations he commissioned for the project. While still a kid he learned to operate a linotype machine and he took lifelong pride in his skills at cranking out hot metal type, hence the esoteric epitaph on his headstone in the Snohomish GAR Cemetery- "A Little Eccentric, But Justified." I think he was always a journeyman typesetter at heart. Many thanks for helping to keep his story alive.

John Patric died on August 31, 1985 at the age of 83 in Everett, WA.

Selected works

Plays
Books
National Geographic
Reader's Digest
Other works

References

  1. ↑ Reverend Larry (December 16, 2012). "John "Hugo N Frye" Patric". Find a Grave. Retrieved 2015-03-24.
  2. ↑ "Birth Return: John Patric". Washington State Digital Archives.
  3. 1 2 "John "Hugo Frye" Patric". ElectionsInfo.net.
  4. ↑ "John Patric". NationalGeographic.com. National Geographic. Retrieved 2015-03-25.
  5. 1 2 Patric, John (1945). "Foreword". Yankee Hobo in the Orient (8th ed.). Florence, OR. LCCN 47003382. OCLC 2044145.
  6. 1 2 3 Allen, Eric W. (June 13, 1943). "Patric Of 'Flying Pan Creek' Writes on Japan's Strength". Eugene Register-Guard. Retrieved 2015-03-24.
  7. 1 2 Collins, Jane; Lutz, Catherine (1994). "Becoming America's Lens on the World: National Geographic in the Twentieth Century". In Torgovnick, Marianna. Eloquent Obsessions: Writing Cultural Criticism. Duke University Press. p. 144. ISBN 9780822314721. John Patric's coverage of Mussolini's Italy, also from the late 1930s, shows the sinister side of a commitment to present 'only what is of a kindly nature.' Even the Society's quasi-official history represents the early coverage of World War II as a somewhat curious overextension of tact and nonpartisanship: John Patric's March 1937 'Imperial Rome Reborn' celebrated Italy's new glories, but the photographs were chilling: ...
  8. 1 2 3 "Production in Shipbuilding Plants: Executive Hearings Before the Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries, House of Representatives, Seventy-eighth Congress, First Session, on H.Res. 52, a Resolution Authorizing Investigation of the National Defense Program as it Relates to the Committee". U.S. Government Printing Office. 1943. pp. 847, 1105, 1140.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Dobbs, Ricky F. (2005). Yellow Dogs and Republicans: Allan Shivers and Texas Two-Party Politics. Texas A&M University Press. p. 12. ISBN 9781585444076.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Finch, Christopher (2010). Chuck Close: Life. Prestel. pp. 66–57. ISBN 978-3791336770.
  11. 1 2 Holtz, William (1995). The Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane. University of Missouri Press. p. 291. ISBN 9780826210159.
  12. ↑ Hawkins, Stephanie L. (2010). American Iconographic: National Geographic, Global Culture, and the Visual Imagination. University of Virginia Press. p. 128. ISBN 9780813929750.
  13. ↑ Seldes, George Henry (1943). Facts and fascism. Justin Bread. pp. 199–200.
  14. ↑ Uden, Martin (2012). Times Past in Korea: An Illustrated Collection of Encounters, Customs and Daily Life Recorded by Foreign Visitors. Routledge. pp. 30–31. ISBN 9781136641190.
  15. 1 2 3 Boese, Alex (2014). "Top 20 Satirical Candidates of All Time". Hoaxes.org. Alex Boese.
  16. ↑ Blake, Warner. "Carnegie Library Building, 1910". snohomishthenandnow.org. Retrieved 2015-03-26.
  17. 1 2 3 Rev.Lawrence, Taylor. "Photo of Aurthur, Emma, Maude Patric Grave Marker". www.findagrave.com. Retrieved March 27, 2015.
  18. ↑ DeLong, Dan (May 24, 2002). "Daily News Gallery – 5/25/2002". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved March 26, 2015. A photo taken in the 1930s shows Snohomish librarians Emma Patric and Catharine McMurchy.
  19. ↑ "Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910—Population (Snohomish, Washington)". Digitalarchives.wa.gov. Department of Commerce and Labor—Bureau of the Census. April 18, 1910. Retrieved 2015-05-25.
  20. ↑ "1920 US census form for 2nd ward of Snohomish Washington". wikimedia.org. US Census Bureau. Retrieved March 27, 2015.
  21. ↑ Patric, John (1945). Yankee Hobo in the Orient (8th ed.). Frying Pan Creek. p. 136. LCCN 47003382. OCLC 2044145.
  22. 1 2 3 Schlaikjer, Erich. "EPS Review #47 – Yankee Hobo in the Orient". Schlaikjer.net. Erich Schlaikjer. Retrieved 2015-03-25.
  23. ↑ "Hugo N. Frye". OlyBlog.net. Retrieved 2015-03-25.
  24. ↑ University of Michigan (1925). "General Register". Detroit: UM Libraries. Retrieved 2015-03-25.
  25. 1 2 3 Brimer, Dorothy (February 5, 1950). "Author Cites Danger of All-Powerful Government". Kingsport Times News.
  26. ↑ Everett Public Library staff (November 5, 2012). "I ain't got no Home". The Herald.
  27. ↑ "Students Oppose". Austin Daily Texan. March 1, 1933.
  28. ↑ "Ex-student Reported Missing from Room". Austin Daily Texan. May 25, 1933.
  29. ↑ The Washington Newspaper. Volumes 4–5. 1918. Retrieved 2015-03-25.
  30. ↑ Patric, John W. (February 25, 1922). "You'd Have Felt Sorry for Him 18 Years Ago". American Insurance Digest and Insurance Monitor 70. Retrieved 2015-03-25.
  31. ↑ Chamberlin, William H. (June 20, 1943). "Japan's Muscle Men". The New York Times. p. 20. Retrieved 2015-03-26.
  32. ↑ "Ex Tells Why Japs are Strong". Austin Daily Texan. September 1, 1943.
  33. 1 2 3 Johnson, William (March 1955). "Portrait of Patric" (PDF). Faith and Freedom. pp. 12–17.
  34. ↑ "Girl Scouts Make Collection of Stockings for China". Tucson Daily Citizen. June 4, 1942.
  35. ↑ Taylor, Rennie (April 23, 1942). "Junk Pile Tire Gets New Life". Oakland Tribune.
  36. ↑ Boese, Alex (2014). "Hugo N. Frye: Later Instances of Hugo N. Frye: John "Hugo N. Frye" Patric". Hoaxes.org. Alex Boese. Retrieved 2015-03-25.
  37. ↑ "63 Wn.2d 821, THE STATE OF WASHINGTON, Respondent, v. JOHN PATRIC, Appellant". Courts.mrsc.org. Department Two. Supreme Court. February 13, 1964. Retrieved 2015-03-25.
  38. ↑ "Hugo N. Frye Gets Second Court Ruling". The Spokesman-Review. February 16, 1964. p. 4.
  39. ↑ "Patric Sent To Mental Hospital". Lodi News-Sentinel. June 10, 1958. pp. 1–2.
  40. ↑ "Court tirade nets term in hospital for John Patric". Ellensburg Daily Record. May 27, 1958. p. 3.
  41. ↑ O'Donnell, Jack (September 28, 2008). "Seems like Yesterday". The Herald.
  42. ↑ "History of the Blanket Primary in Washington". sos.wa.gov. Washington Secretary of State, Elections Division. Retrieved 2015-03-25.
  43. 1 2 "John 'Hugo Frye' Patric". Lynnwood Enterprise. September 14, 1977.
  44. 1 2 "'Nuisance' Joins Race for Governor". The Spokesman-Review. July 13, 1960. p. 16.
  45. ↑ "Elections Search Result". sos.wa.gov. Washington Secretary of State, Elections Division. Retrieved 2015-03-25.
  46. ↑ "For Auntie's Sake". The Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, NC). March 5, 1930. John Patric's play is centered about the efforts of a college boy to 'make a hit'

Further reading

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